Fitba: You may very well go bust, but that is a risk I am prepared to take

[Jumbo McGinnis]

Bizarrely, an advert appeared on my Facebook and it was Celtic’s players returning to training and I’m confused by it. Their league campaign has ended and they’re out of Europe, is the Scottish Cup likely to resume then?

[Sporting]

I'm not really that knowledgeable about how it is in Scotland but if this phenomenon is worse there than it is in Romania, say, or Turkey, I'll be utterly shocked.

I had to look this up but since 2008-9 there have been six different champions in Romania, and four in Turkey. Not brilliant but a lot more variety than in Scotland. Mind you, that's titles. Not sure about support.

[ad hoc]

But the complaint was about people supporting the "big teams". That's a huge problem in Romania, for example, where over 50% of fans in the whole country identify as Steaua fans, and in turkey where it seems to me that the vast majority of people support one of the big 3 Istanbul teams.

[Sporting]

Yeah, I get that now.

[Sporting]

For those of you who like your stats, here is a guide to football club support by provinces in Spain. It's in Spanish but shouldn't be too difficult to navigate:

https://www.jotdown.es/2014/09/mapa-...utbol-espanol/

[ursus arctos]

Italy and Greece are additional notable examples

Indeed, I would argue that the "big club" model is rather more prominent than that of support for one's "local" club

[Stobart]

Agreed, but Imo it’s a far, far bigger issue in Scotland than it is in other countries.

The average attendances for 2019/20 don't imply there's a far, far bigger issue. I've round the figures to the nearest thousand.

Celtic : 58K
Rangers 49K
Hearts : 17K
Hibs : 17K
Aberdeen : 14K

Benfica : 52K
Porto : 36K
Sporting 30K
Vitoria Guimaraes 17K
Boavista 12K

Young Boys 27K
Basel 22K
St Gallen 14K
Luzern 9K
Zurich 9K

[DPDPDPDP]

In Scotland, in the last 55 years, only 4 teams have won the league. Celtic, Rangers, Aberdeen (3 times), Dundee United (once).

Aberdeen won the league in 1984/85, every year since then the league has been won by Rangers or Celtic.

Also, in current years, UEFA have made the imbalance worse with their huge rewards, effectively for failure. A couple of seasons ago, Celtic won 1 game out of 6 in the CL group stages, got parachuted into Europa League, won a couple of matches and received €40m or so.

[ursus arctos]

Only five clubs have won the Portuguese title since the league was formed in 1935.

And two of those (Beleneses and Boavista) have only won it once.

Every title since 2002 has been won by either Benfica or Porto.

[Sporting]

Only 9 champions in Spain.

I wonder which is the most "democratic" league, whether in absolute numbers or expressed in percentage terms.

[ursus arctos]

Of the most prominent, likely England or France (St. Etienne with most titles in professional era (since 1932) with only ten, almost 20 different winners).

[elguapo4]

Between the last of Shamrock Rovers 4 league titles in a row in 1986/87 and the first of Dundalk's 5 wins in the last six seasons in 2014, 9 different clubs won the league, and it was only retained 3 times.

[ad hoc]

Between 1970 and 2006 in Romania there were 5 different champions
Since 2006 (when the name of the league was changed) there have been 7, of whom 5 won it for the first time in their history

[ursus arctos]

Some other data points (in each case since the advent of a professional league, with that year in brackets)

Germany/West Germany (1963/64) Twelve different champions; Bayern with 28 ahead of Gladbach and Dortmund with five each.

Netherlands (1954/55): Ten different champions; Ajax with 26, only Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord have more than 2 titles (AZ has 2).

Belgium (1894/5): Sixteen different champions; Anderlecht with 34, of the seven clubs with 5 or more titles, only three are still in the top flight, with three others either being amateur or defunct.

Italy (1929/30): Twelve different champions; Juve with 33, Inter 16, Milan 15 (Roma were the last team other than one of those three to win Serie A (in 2000/01).

Greece (1958/59): Five different champions; Olympiakos with 30 (PAOK three, Larissa one) Between Larissa in 87/88 and PAOK in 2018/19 only Olympiakos, Panathinaikos and AEK won the league

Turkey (1959): Five different champions: Galatasaray 21. Trabzonspor (six) and Bursaspor (one) are the only non-Istanbul teams ever to win the title. Bursaspor the only non "big three" winner since 1984.

[DPDPDPDP]

The average attendances for 2019/20 don't imply there's a far, far bigger issue. I've round the figures to the nearest thousand.

Celtic : 58K
Rangers 49K
Hearts : 17K
Hibs : 17K
Aberdeen : 14K

Benfica : 52K
Porto : 36K
Sporting 30K
Vitoria Guimaraes 17K
Boavista 12K

Young Boys 27K
Basel 22K
St Gallen 14K
Luzern 9K
Zurich 9K

Attendances don’t tell the whole story though. I don’t have the exact number but Celtic’s turnover Is more than 10 times that of Aberdeen’s. The biggest differential is not from attendances but from UEFA’s ridiculous rewards and even more ridiculous qualifying criteria for CL and EL, which allow the bigger leagues to become ever bigger and stronger than the smaller leagues and also allows bigger clubs in the smaller leagues to become bigger and stronger than their domestic rivals. Thus UEFA, more Than anything else, is responsible for ensuring less competitiveness both in terms of domestic leagues and even more so less competitiveness between teams from the bigger leagues versus team from the smaller leagues - and the reduced competitiveness In both is only going to get worse and worse with every passing season,

[1974ddr]

I think that's a very succinct summary of exactly what UEFA hoped to achieve through the changes they made to their competitions in the last twenty years or so. I'm sure someone somewhere got a bonus. Probably in a brown envelope.